Bodyscape: Isolation, Health, and the Woman’s Voice

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treatment, or to “chase cure” as it was called. Chasing cure consisted of rest, fresh air,

good food, and fighting the impulse to cough. Sapergia spoke of how odd such a

treatment seems in 2005:

Before they had antibiotics, your attitude was considered to be critical if you wanted to get cured, so you had to “chase cure.” This meant you had to follow all the directions--eat the six meals a day, drink the cups of cream and eat the huge lumps of butter they were forcing down you, and do it cheerfully, and freeze at night. Now that effective drugs exist, this rather moralistic view seems strange and archaic. (interview)

At the time Old Crocks is set, if “chasing cure” wasn't enough, surgeons would employ

various methods of collapsing an infected lung in hopes it would stop the spread of the

disease.67

Within Old Crocks there are many layers of isolation. Medically, Fort San was

a hospital isolation camp where infected individuals were sent to prevent spreading

tuberculosis. Geographically, Fort San was away from major centres of population,

nestled into the Qu'Appelle Valley approximately 100 kilometres from Regina. This

isolation bred self-sufficiency. “The Fort” had its own radio station, patient newspaper,